


Habits

by mollyknox



Series: In All the Ways There Were [3]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Kissing, M/M, Talking, gay hobbits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:34:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27462025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollyknox/pseuds/mollyknox
Summary: Frodo thinks about his feelings for Sam in Rivendell, and acts on them.
Relationships: Frodo Baggins/Sam Gamgee
Series: In All the Ways There Were [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2188077
Comments: 18
Kudos: 305





	Habits

It was something about his hands, Frodo decided, that made him so very much in love with Samwise Gamgee. They were sun-browned hands, callused and strong, used to tools and hard work. One might assume hands like that would be rough and clumsy, but they could be so gentle. How often had Frodo watched him lift a bunch of flowers and tangled roots out of the earth, watched him repot them without breaking a stem?

It was ridiculous to be jealous of flowers.

Or maybe it was his gaze. The way his eyes went soft and focused all at the same time, resting on the job in front of him like a quilt settling snugly over a bed. The way he seemed to go _quiet_ , and whatever he was working on became his whole world. Frodo envied it, and wondered at it, because things were never quiet inside his own head. 

He knew that gaze very well because he'd watched Samwise at work more times and with a greater interest than was strictly appropriate. There was always an excuse; sometimes he had to inspect the garden, sometimes he was drinking tea at the window, sometimes he simply looked up from a book and caught a glimpse and stayed like that, fixed and unable to look away. 

Sam had never noticed these looks, of course, because Sam focused on what was between his hands. The excuses were for Frodo, a complicated layering of guilt and shame and plausible deniability that permitted him to watch his gardener at work. 

_I am just taking my tea,_ he would think to a faceless, disapproving person inside his mind. _You cannot blame me for standing at the window on such a lovely day._ And all the while, hidden behind a screen built of blandness and disinterest, the soft core of him would heat and melt as he watched Sam’s sure hands patting seedlings into the garden beds, watched the movement of his broad back as he chopped firewood.

He was working now. Sitting back on his heels in the shifting sunlight - the light was different in Rivendell, somehow - and darning his vest. The needle flashing as it dove in and out, steady and sure. 

The noon bell rang and Sam looked up and Frodo, who was supposed to be looking over Bilbo’s manuscript but had not taken in a word for some time, remembered he did not have to look away anymore. He got to just _watch_ , without excuses. It still didn’t quite seem real. 

“What is it, sir?” Sam asked. 

“Just looking at you,” he said, and wrinkled his nose because surely he could come up with something better to say than _that_. But it made Sam smile, eyes creasing at the corners, and that was worth everything.

“Now why would you be doing that,” Sam said, a half-question, bending back to his darning. The needle went slower now, unsteady, the work-trance broken. Frodo felt guilty for distracting him.

But not _very_ guilty.

“I’m just trying to decide what I like more,” Frodo said archly. “Your hands, or your eyes.” As though every part of Sam wasn’t perfect just as it was. 

The very tips of Sam’s ears went pink. “And have you picked?” he asked, brow furrowing. 

“Not yet,” he said, putting down the sheaf of parchment and going over to sit next to Sam. “I may require a closer inspection.”

Sam put his darning aside in an eager rush, and Frodo took his hands and dropped his gaze. Frodo was still shy, still afraid he would cross a line. Even though it had been Sam who said _I love you_ , Sam who had kissed him, this still felt like he was getting away with something. 

Frodo laced his fingers through Sam’s. Gandalf had said (brows raised; did he suspect?) that Sam had stayed at his side all through the fever, held his hand through all the nights. Maybe that was why it felt so normal now. Like he'd died in the fever and been reborn as someone who had never _not_ been holding Sam's hand. 

“Eyes,” said Sam.

“Hm?”

“Don’t take offense, sir, for your hands are lovely,” Sam said, and flushed red. He turned Frodo’s hands over and traced the palms, the writer’s callus on his right hand, treating him with the same care he had given to the darning.

“But your eyes...they’re something special,” he continued. “Very few blue-eyed hobbits in the Shire, far as I’ve seen. Like a summer sky.” Frodo smiled and kept his gaze down, but he could _feel_ Sam looking at him. 

“We were talking about you,” he said, and kissed one of Sam’s hands, then the other.

“Mine are Gamgee brown,” mumbled Sam. “Ordinary as dirt.”

“Beg to differ,” Frodo murmured, running his lips across Sam’s knuckles, nuzzling the downy hair on the back of his hands. Sam shivered. 

“You will have to look up to see my eyes,” Sam said, almost pertly, and Frodo huffed a laugh.

Even though Sam was the one whose emotions were written plain on his face, looking at him made Frodo feel naked and exposed. He’d been afraid to meet his eyes fully for years now, afraid that Sam would see the truth and be made uneasy and then show that unease. 

Frodo didn’t know much for sure, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to bear that. 

But he was allowed to look. Sam _wanted_ him to look. He kept forgetting because it was so very hard to believe.

“I distracted you from your work,” Frodo said, nervous in that warm brown gaze. They were _not_ ordinary eyes. Someday he’d figure out how to convince Sam of that.

“It will keep, sir,” Sam said. “May I kiss you?”

“You don’t need to keep _asking_ ,” Frodo said with a grin, cut off when Sam pressed his lips to his. “And you don’t need -” Another kiss, planted at the corner of this mouth this time. “To call me sir,” Frodo finished quickly, before Sam kissed him full again. 

Oh, but it was sweet to be kissed like that. Carefully at first, like he was something fragile, then deeper. _He is only doing this to make you happy_ was harder to believe when presented with a kiss like that, all full of hunger and want.

One of the things he loved so much about Samwise was that he did not turn away from the things he wanted. And being one of those things was the most precious feeling. 

“Hard to shake the habit,” Sam said against his lips, their breath mingling hot and damp.

“I know,” Frodo said, and leaned forward to catch Sam’s mouth again. 

He never knew what to do with his hands when kissing (not that there had been a great deal of kissing in his life up to this point). But Sam knew, the same way he knew how to knead bread and darn vests and plant roses without getting scratched.

One hand around Frodo’s side, holding him up, pulling him close. The other brushing past his cheek so his whole face flushed, slipping around his shoulder. Fingers just grazing his neck, toying with his collar. A promise and a question all at once. 

“You go all tense when I kiss you,” Sam said, lips buzzing on his neck. “Am I doing it wrong?”

“No, my dear,” Frodo said, and stirred to comb his hand through Sam’s coarse, sun-bleached hair. “I suppose it’s just a habit, too. I'm used to trying not to touch you.”

“We both have habits to shake,” Sam said, and Frodo nodded and placed his hand deliberately on Sam’s chest, threading between the buttons to feel his skin. Warm, and solid, and real. 

It was a habit not to look at Sam’s eyes, to hold back from touching him; same as the habit of taking what he wanted and folding it away in a small, private box in his mind. 

“I can’t decide between your hands and your eyes,” he said. Sam blinked and blushed. 

“Well, you don’t have to choose,” he said. “You’ve all of me, s - Frodo.” And the way he said it, so light and easy, made Frodo suddenly feel like crying. He was a planner, someone with maps and lists and ideas for the future, but he’d never made plans for what to do when the person he wanted was clear and willing in front of him. Sam wouldn’t understand if he cried, though, so he covered by leaning in and kissing him, and making sure not to go tense this time. 

Truth be told, what he liked most was being the thing that Sam focused on. Being the thing that was held in his hands, that his perfect, beautiful gaze settled on. Being taken care of with tenderness and skill. He would unlearn a thousand old habits in order to have that.


End file.
